


Gotham Knights

by ArthurianScribe



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Anger, Angry Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon is Batgirl, Bargaining, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Angst (DCU), Batfamily-centric (DCU), Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Complicated Parent/Child Relationship, Denial, Depressed Tim Drake, Depression, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is a Good Brother, Everyone Needs A Hug, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Gotham Knights (Game), Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is a Batfamily Member, Jason Todd is a good brother, Mentioned Bruce Wayne, No beta we die like mne, Sad Tim Drake, Tim Drake Has a Bad Time, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake is Robin, and i will accept nothing less, based on the Gotham Knights trailer, i watched the Gotham Knights trailers and it made me sad, no editing we die like robins, so i made the batkids sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArthurianScribe/pseuds/ArthurianScribe
Summary: “If you’re watching this, I’m dead”Or, it has been said that no two people grieve the same way. This is equally true for the Batfamily.Based on the trailer for the Gotham Knights game released for DC's Fandome.
Relationships: Barbara Gordon & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 142





	Gotham Knights

**Author's Note:**

> So... I know this is not one of my WIPs, but I saw the Gotham Knights trailer last night and couldn't get the expression on Jason's face out of my head. Somehow, that turned into this.

-0  
[JtJtJt]  
-0

“If you’re watching this… I’m dead”

Jason knew what a code black was. He knew what it meant. That’s why he hesitated to decrypt the file in the first place. But he thought he could be forgiven if actually watching and hearing his father say the words hit him almost as hard as the Joker’s crowbar had. Maybe even harder.

Jason had honestly never expected this day to come, no matter how stupid that sounded. Like, okay, yes he had considered the possibility that Batman would be the death of Bruce Wayne, would be the death of all of them someday. Logically, he knew that with the sort of life they led, it was pretty likely. But Jason had never been the most logical member of the family, he’d leave that to Barbara, to Tim, hell, even to the Bat himself. He had always been more emotional, more in-the-moment, for better or worse. And while he may have spent his entire life knowing that the end could come for any of them at any time, that it had come for him, the only thing he could think was holy shit, this is really happening. That was when he realized that apparently at least part of him still believed in the legend of the Batman, still had believed that the old man was immortal. Batman didn’t die. Batman couldn’t die. He was too important. 

Surely this was some sort of plan. A contingency put in place to make their enemies think that Batman was dead. Because if Bruce had gone through the trouble of destroying the cave, destroying the manor, rather than calling in for reinforcements from his family or even the Justice League, then surely this was the kind of drastic circumstance that might lead him to pull something so over the top as to fake his death. 

But… he hadn’t reached out. He had triggered a code black and not given any hint that there might be some greater plan at work. And Batman could be an asshole, he and Jason had had their fair share of conflict over that fact. But… Bruce was his dad. And Bruce knew what it was like to be suddenly, violently orphaned. To have your world flipped like that. And Bruce would never make his kids go through that again if there was any other option. If he was alive… Bruce would have gotten in contact with someone. And he wouldn’t have killed himself for anything less than absolutely dire circumstances.

Jason needed to call Dickie and the others. Make sure that Alfred and the others hadn’t been there when the cave blew. And then they needed to get to work. A storm was coming to Gotham, and the bats and birds would be ready for it.

Mourning could wait. Even if Bruce was dead, he’d be back. In this business, everyone came back eventually. He was living proof of that after all. 

-0  
[DgDgDg]  
-0

When Dick received the Code Black transmission, he didn’t want to decrypt the file. He knew the minute he saw the notification that he had lost something irreplaceable and it would be real the minute he opened the file. But he was the oldest. And if he had received the Code Black, then the others would have as well. And Dick knew he couldn’t leave them to grieve alone. So, he opened the file.

But the minute he saw Bruce’s face, heard him say what Dick already knew, something deep down in the parts of himself he usually pretended didn’t exist started to burn.

How dare he. How dare he do this to his family. Didn’t he know that they needed him? Didn’t he know that Dick needed him? 

There had to have been another way to destroy the cave, a way that didn’t leave him orphaned again. God, what about the others? Babs and Alfred were usually so good at muscling through pain to make sure the job got done, but he knew they felt it just as much as the rest of them. Jason and B had always had a rocky relationship, but things had been so good the last year. And poor Tim was still just a kid. 

What happened to Robin when there was no Batman? It was probably going to be up to him to figure that out.

By the time the video had ended, Dick Grayson was nothing but rage, the deep kind that consumed you and made you want to tear apart the universe for daring to wrong you so significantly. He could feel the heat of his anger threatening to burn him to a crisp if he didn’t get up and do something. He figured going a few rounds with a practice dummy wasn’t a bad place to start.

Wham! went another “How dare he?”

Wham! went a “Why now?”

Wham! went a “Why us?

Wham! went a “Why me?”

Wham! went an “It’s not fair!” 

Wham! went another and another and another until with one last slam of his fist the dummy went flying. And most of the fury went with it, leaving something cold, and heavy in its place. 

He wanted to hold on to that anger to keep from spiraling somewhere darker, but it wasn’t his dad he was mad at. He knew Bruce, and he wouldn’t have done this to them flippantly. No, someone or something had pushed him to it. Something that gave the Batman no other options. And Dick Grayson had one promise for them:

“Whoever the fuck did this to my family is going to pay for it”

-0  
[BgBgBg]  
-0

Barbara Gordon wasn’t one to shy away from bad news. She was way too practical for that. She’d rather take problems head-on, so she could get to damage control faster. She didn’t hesitate to open the Code Black transmission, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a lump in her throat the size of the Batsignal when she did it. 

She didn’t feel very practical after that. It wasn’t right. Bruce hadn’t quite been a father to her the way that he had been to the others. She and her own father had been too close, and Bruce to damaged, for her to ever feel the need to seek that kind of bond. But he had been her mentor, and even more, he had been family. Barbara was low on both of those now.

She wanted to go tearing through the Belfry’s files, searching, searching, searching for anything that could tell her why this was happening.

It wasn’t fair that this was happening so soon after she’d lost her Dad. Gotham still hadn’t recovered from losing the Commissioner, and Barbara definitely hadn’t gotten over losing her dad. If she could have just had more time…

She just kept staring at her computer while the part of her that had been bleeding and aching since her dad died just kept begging another message to show up. One that would say that somehow Bruce had survived the explosion or that he had gotten out beforehand or anything. Just… please…give her something to work with here.

She must have missed something. She should have been paying more attention. Maybe she would have caught something in Gotham’s rumor web or on the darknet. She should have seen this coming. She should have stopped it. She should have known.

But her dad had always said that “should haves” weren’t helpful.

Barbara took a deep breath and then, when that wasn’t enough, she took another. 

She had work to do. 

Bruce wasn’t wrong to be worried about what happen would when Batman…disappeared. She would go through everything they had on the bat’s shared files, see if there was anything in Bruce’s that would explain what happened. And then her family would do what they always did. They would keep Gotham from flying to pieces. And she wasn’t going to lose anyone else in the process. 

She’d make sure of it this time.

-0  
[TdTdTd]  
-0

“If you’re watching this, I’m dead” 

And just like that, Tim’s world shattered.

Batman had been the one constant thing throughout his childhood. Even when he was a little kid, and his parents would abandon him once again in favor of a new dig site and he felt so vulnerable, he still knew that Batman was out there somewhere, keeping the darkness at bay. Then, once he became Robin, he found in Bruce the same stability he’d found in Batman for years. He always knew that he could ask Bruce for help with anything and if he needed it, Bruce would be there. Even when they first met, and Bruce was angry that this child would dare try and drag him back into the light after the loss of Jason, even then Tim knew Batman could never really ignore a kid in need. 

Batman was Tim’s safety net, and Bruce Wayne was his dad. And now they were both gone.

Tim thought he knew grief. But there was no world in which losing his parents could have prepared him for this. This…this…this pit inside of him, that was just spreading like the tingling in his fingers as he gripped the desktop in front of him as though if he held on tight enough he’d be able to make all this make sense somehow. 

But how could it make sense? How could things ever make sense again when his Dad was just…gone?

Tim struggled to wheeze in a breath around the stone in his throat, just refusing to let the tears clouding his vision fall, not until he’d finished the video. And when it did, Tim was left on a knife’s edge, balancing between falling into the numbness that had been creeping up on him ever since the notification first popped up or giving into the maelstrom of emotions beating against his insides like crashing waves against the hull of a wooden ship. Too far one way and he might never be able to make himself come back to the sound and the fury, too far the other and he could break apart. 

Tim forced himself to take another breath and let his eyes squeeze shut. He gathered his emotions and all the broken parts that were Tim, forcing them into a box that he promised he’d return to when it was safe. There’d be time to cry and scream the way he wanted to later, but right now Robin had one last mission from Batman. 

And Robin would be damned before he let Batman down.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys. I hope you liked it, and if you did please leave a comment or kudos down below. If anyone's interested I also post my writing and some of my ideas to my tumblr under "allthebooksandcrannies"


End file.
